Who do you play with, and why?

[Henry]

My current group consists of people whom I became friends with at my previous job, or people whom they have brought into the group. We've been friends for 8 years now, and do activities outside of gaming (though as time goes on, time constraints seem to make that less and less). I couldn't imagine gaming with a bunch of people I don't know on a regular basis, without getting to know them. I game with friends, and when I game with strangers, I tend to MAKE friends, so it's all good.

My previous group all consisted of people I met through high school, and their friends. There were some really close friends in that gang (I'm talking stood-as-my-best-man-and-groomsmen close), and I'm sorry that moving and lack of time kind of let those friendships lapse.

Of the current gang, almost all of them work in computer technology sales and service (everything from mom-and-pop computer sales to IT support staff).

 

[diaglo]

I game with friends, and when I game with strangers, I tend to MAKE friends, so it's all good.

oops.. forgot to say this in my previous post. ditto.

(I'm talking stood-as-my-best-man-and-groomsmen close)

ditto. i'm going to yet another wedding this august for one of my groomsmen/ex-player from the OD&D dayes. even old guys can get married and find happiness.

 

[Kanegrundar]

I game with close friends mostly. Two of which are married (to each other) and he was my high school science teacher...many, many moons ago! The other players also tend to be some of his former students that we've found to share common interests (like gaming) and have inducted into our little geek clique. It's not always perfect, but it's always fun.

Kane

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

My current group is a merging of a couple of groups. The other DM is a friend of about 20 years (we bacame friends playing RPGs). My wife is part of the group, I introduced her to the game. Most of the rest of the group are part of another group my friend once ran and a couple of their significant others. As a result most of the group are players who then became friends, rather than the other way around, but now we are all good friends who will truly miss two of our players and friends who are moving away in two weeks

 

[mhacdebhandia]

The majority of the games I play in involve members of my university's gaming and geek culture group (SUTEKH at the University of Sydney), the core members of which form a large social circle anyway, so like many here I'd still be hanging out with people even if we didn't play together - and, naturally, there are some people in the circle with whom I'm not friends and yet still play with, or who I don't play with but consider good friends.

We tend to have large games - three of the last four D&D games I played in with this group all had eight players, not including the DM, at one point or another. They also tend to last a long time - Planescape lasted two and a half years, Wheel of Time has been running for two years, and a homebrew game played roughly weekly for six months.

Recently, I've joined Hong's fortnightly game, to which I was invited purely because we know each other from rec.games.frp.dnd and, earlier, soc.religion.kibology. It's the first time I've played with an established group I'm not familiar with; I'm no stranger to joining games midcampaign (the homebrew game mentioned above is the first game I was in from the start since Third Edition came out), but I've never done it with people I don't know before.

I don't tend to go to gaming conventions precisely because I like to play with people I know with gaming styles I like; I'm sensitive to the gaming quirks of others. I get a great deal of pleasure from playing with people whose styles I enjoy (even if and probably because they differ from my own), but conversely playing with people whose style I dislike irritates me more than most. So it's a very new experience for me to play with people I don't know, but I'm familiar enough with Hong's style as a DM from his posts to rec.games.frp.dnd, as well as from his description of the group's style when he pitched the game to me, that I felt comfortable joining in.

 

[Rafael Ceurdepyr]

Who do you play with? Ages, gender, education, etc.
Why do stay with that group?
How does the group dynamic change game play in your case>

Since Stormborn neglected to answer part of his own question, I'll chime in as a member of his group.

Two of us are in our early 30s, two in early 40s. Two male, two female. Education-wise, we have 3 master's degrees among us (history, library science and divinity). All are native Alabamians, 3 from (rather un-Southern) north Alabama, 1 from central (but we don't hold that against him). Oh! And we mustn't forget the fifth party member, Beryl the cat (owner of Stormborn and his wife), who manages to get her voice recorded on the official tape of gaming sessions on a regular basis.

Someone in another post mentioned their wife preferring the roleplaying aspects. I have to confess to that as well (despite my nom de game, I'm female), even being accused at times of being a LARP-er. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) I'm always coming up some prop or other--like the letter Raef intends to give his fellow adventurer (the lovely Ari) declaring that although he loves her, he doesn't feel worthy, &c.--or some other romantic or roleplaying angle. When I felt my character was acting a bit too obnoxious, I expressed to the DM (Stormborn) that Raef needed his comeuppance. That's when Raef died in a duel of a poisoned pistol ball. He got better (we have multiple lives in this campaign).

Anyway, gaming with this group is always fun and I probably obsess about it just a teensy bit too much. But such is my nature.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Demographics time! I missed it in the original post, because I'm a genius.

Okay. The people in my university gaming circle range in age between 17 and 26 - some of us have graduated, some of us have not, and age is not a reliable indicator of this division. It is a commonly-held piece of wisdom that you join SUTEKH and kiss your lecture attendance goodbye. I like to think that it's because we're so much fun to be around, but it's probably because we're all lazy gamers.

I'd say that the split in our group between science students and arts (humanities) students is about 50/50 in general, though I'm lumping engineers in with the science group and miscellany like education and nursing students in with arts. Many of us are doing (or have completed) Honours or postgraduate studies; I have a B.A. (Hons) and am shortly to take six months off from my M.Phil., for example, while one of my regular DMs is a B.Eng. and in the middle of a coursework M.Eng. at the same time as he works for a transport planning corporation.

The one thing that definitely affects the playing dynamic is that too many of us hold to one or more of the five Geek Social Fallacies. We tolerated an extremely disruptive and irritating player in one game for far too long simply because no-one wanted to upset her by suggesting that, if she was so damn bored in the game, she could leave (and it doesn't help that she took any in-character negative reaction to her PC as an insult to her personally).

This is less of an issue since she gave up roleplaying (of her own accord, mind you).

 

[Kanegrundar]

Oops! I missed the demographics as well!

The group consists of:
4 males ages 27, 33, 20, and 20
1 female age 33 (hopefully another gal, age 27, if I can get my girlfriend into gaming as well)

The sad thing is that I may be leaving the group, and since I've always been the one to get most of the sessions and games set up I fear the group will fall apart. That's the breaks I guess, but I'm sure we'll still get together to run some one-off games or a quick game of HeroQuest or something.

Kane

 

[Arnwyn]

Who do you play with? Ages, gender, education, etc.
Why do stay with that group? How does the group dynamic change game play in your case>

- I play with 6 friends I've known for many years. We're all in our late 20's, male, and have a variety of careers: 2 accountants, 1 inventory manager, 1 IT deptarment manager, 1 university student, 1 tech support guy, 1 graphic designer.

I stay with the group 'cause we're all friends.

I don't know how the group dynamic "changes" the game play, because this is the only group I've ever had (for more than a decade, now).

 

[mac1504]

Well I started with a small group of friends (from High School) soon after I returned home from the Army. We started playing the summer 3rd edition came out. Unfortunately one of our friends passed away, and the group dissolved.

After a few months, I was really beginning to miss playing so I answered a post on the old Eric Noah site and found a group I've been with for over 2 years now. The group has changed quite a bit over that time, but there are still the core group that I've made good friends with. We've all gone to Gen-Con together and even get together for board-games and the occassional LAN frag-frest.